Writing in English as a second or additional language has become an important skill that can be applied in many areas of human activity. As we become a society within which written text is an important instrument that helps create new ideas, services, and products, English text is often used as a preferred mode of communication. Traditionally approaches in teaching how to write in English range from pedagogies that center function or text structure and grammar, content or information, and personal expression. Writing instructors can choose elements to include in their lessons after considering the instructional goals and writing elements their students may benefit from. Although the many approaches to writing instruction consider different aspects of writing such as textual patterns, sentence structure, and writer's voice, there is still a gap in how we understand idea generation and development and what they may look like in student-generated texts. Because it is less challenging to evaluate writing using linguistic markers like quantity of errors, the amount of text written within specific time constraints, complexity of sentences, and caliber of academic words, studying how ideas may present themselves in second language writing has not been explored to the extent that more concrete language criteria of writing have been. This research project aims to move the scale in Second Language Writing (SLW) research and pedagogy from language focused criteria of what is good writing towards how we can start including ideas and their development in writing instruction. To understand how ideas manifest in students' texts, I collected multiple written drafts from students enrolled in an 8-week intensive English language course, completed individual conferences where feedback on writing was provided, and asked the students to rewrite their initial drafts. After the revisions were complete, I interviewed the students, and posed questions on the critical moments when their ideas changed from one draft to another to reveal writing processes. I then coded data and completed a thematic analysis to build a case for each student to highlight their engagement in the process of idea development. After analysis of each individual case study was concluded, I compared the four features of creativity, presented conclusions on similarities between case studies, and described their relationship. The description of the four creativity features fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration contributes to our understanding of writing processes and provides an additional path to a writing pedagogy that makes space for idea generation and development in addition to commonly used linguistic markers used to define writing quality. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]